By 1948, the time was ripe for a second world enemy to be proclaimed at large since the French Revolution. Ruling class oppression was the first, but now the ravages of two world wars, economic crises in the intervening years, and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s provided the necessary fuel to ignite new fears of ecological and social collapse. On the first page of his introduction, Osborn writes that, "towards the end of the Second World War," it occurred to him that another and far older planetary war had been taking place, a "silent war, eventually the most deadly war," which was responsible for more human misery "than any that has resulted from armed conflict" and "contains potentialities of ultimate disaster" beyond even the reach of "atomic power." Our Plundered Planet would have made a fitting subtitle for The Communist Manifesto, for in both works war is another word for the course of human events, in Marx by his fixation on class warfare through the ages and in Osborn through the "silent war" that "The Plunderer" began waging thousands of years ago against the earth. Even Marx's view of capitalism as the ultimate predatory force in history finds a corresponding echo in Our Plundered Planet, with "the story" of America's relationship to the land in the nineteenth century representing "the most violent and destructive of any written in the long history of civilization."

Duly Noted is convinced that it will never run out of topics. Nevertheless, a remainder of pessimism induces the writer to take notes for a feared arid patch. Often the juice that can be squeezed out of some of these observations does not suffice to fill an article. For filing them in the dustbin, they are too precious as testimonials of the illogic and the dishonesty in public affairs. Therefore, a few products our insanity follow below.

1. The forces positioned to the right of the far Left are generally presented by the PC media to readers without a correcting exposure, as “right wing extremists”. Indeed, both the left-of-center as well as the right-of-center has their share of genuine extremists. The supply of public affairs nuts being plentiful this condition is rather natural. The sane majority needs to be ashamed of their fruitcakes only if they endorse them.

On a cross country trip some twenty years ago, I pulled into a truck stop that caught my eye moments after it came into view. High above the rows of gas pumps two displays were mounted: a huge, inflated model of a polka dotted Tyrannosaurus Rex and a Christian billboard inspired by the Book of Revelation. It was a sign from above two ways in one, with the last quarter hour of a white clock face printed against a black background, the words "Jesus is coming - Be Prepared," and the hands permanently set to five minutes to twelve, Judgment time.

There they were, big as life: a whimsical echo of Sinclair Oil's Dino the Dinosauri and a message from Scripture on the hour of reckoning. It was American to the hilt: a super-sized comic representation of the one prehistoric animal that everyone can recognize standing next to a literal image of Revelation 1:3, "for the time is at hand," and both of them serving as commercial roadside attractions.

The decline and fall of civilizations is man-made and as such reversible.

To the extent that it is run by the Red-Greens, the apple of Western civilization has been allowed by its supposed guardians to house maggots. The resulting rot is not the product of unavoidable decay at work. Those that think that a law makes civilizations rise and then fall hide behind a fake determinism that excuses the accountable.

Civilizations, like the graphic tabulations of temperatures, have their natural ups and downs. Not “rise and fall”, rather “achievement, stagnation, correction, decline, recovery or crash” are the fitting words. Whether a down is followed by a recovery or a collapse is not an expression of “fate” but of choices. Like wealth and poverty, so decline and subjection are largely man-made. A translatable Yiddish-Hungarian proverb expresses the idea when it warns, “misfortune seldom comes from above”.

What the fans of fiction deny because it is politically incorrect is a fact.

So far, we have been spared the last century’s general wars. Instead, we are plagued by conflicts that make the criteria that determines whether an event is a “war” irrelevant. This suggests that our personal point of reference but also the international community’s principles became unrelated to reality. This can be amended: today’s conflicts, while limited in their geographic scope, are regardless of the combatants’ technological limitations, as intense as anything known to us is. This high intensity arises from the conflict parties’ racial, secular ideological, or religious agendas.

Like every major Islamic terror attack, the Boston Marathon bombing of April 15, should have been the occasion of serious reflection and reconsideration of national policies concerning terrorism. However, it was quite disconcerting to note that the whole issue in fact evoked little valuable reactions and did not in the least spark a debate among the larger public; the Americans - apart from the counter-jihad movement that could point out the usual failings of the intelligence services and the lethal consequences of the political correctness pervading government institutions - seem to have grown weary of analyzing terrorism as well as of terrorism itself. This is noteworthy, because some ten years ago many analysts remarked how advanced American views on the Islamic threat were, while Europeans were still struggling to form their first properly anti-Islamic (and not simply anti-immigration or pseudo-fascist) movements.

Criminal idiocy makes likely events out of the scenarios of the impossible.

Some future scenarios of “news” and “opinion” that defy a normal person’s imagination are emerging. Some recent developments make a bundled occurrence of such events likely. The expected telling stories meant here relate to the reactions and the interpretations of Thatcher’s death and the mayhem in Boston.

Hardly was the news of Thatcher’s demise out, the Leftists of all shades that, regardless of the millions murdered in the service of their program, proudly walk with their heads raised, responded. This response proves that their collective participation in, and approval of, crimes have not awoken their lacking sense of decency. The upshot was parties to celebrate the good news. Even attempts to disturb the funeral of the departed PM are reported. One wonders at this junction whether missing decency is a greater fault than a deficiency in the area of politeness.

Now that the dust has settled two weeks after her death, perhaps it is time for a more general reassessment of Baroness Thatcher - of her administration by itself as well as her legacy and historical significance. Few politicians within living memory aroused such different and passionate reactions during or after their lifetime. As we know, for the omniscient progressives and socialists she is regarded as the destroyer of the idyllic post-war Keynesian welfare state in which all people, however humble of origin or abilities, were being taken care of, and economics was still the science of how to spend wealth, not of how it is produced. It is no exaggeration to say that for many on the right she was a kind of long-awaited messiah who would finally come to overthrow the neo-totalitarian order of the welfare state, and thus reverse the trend toward ever more centralization, state control, and thus economic and cultural decline. Some even went so far as to proclaim her the greatest statesman of the twentieth century, both in terms of moral greatness and of influence on the course of historical events. Of course, we can immediately brush aside the by now incredibly childish socialist accusations directed toward Thatcher in the press these days; but in this commentary I would like to analyze the phenomenon of Thatcher in the light of conservative aspirations and objectives. Was she really a “great politician”, in both senses? Did she accomplish as much as she is so often credited for by right and left alike? And: What did she achieve in the long run for the right in Europe and America?

Lately, “Duly Noted” has discussed the Left’s efforts to strangulate “majority rule” whenever the majority that can be had fails to support its leadership.

Leftist revolutionaries might openly admit to their program or they can pose as “reformers”. Whatever the banner the pirates fly, the real program –not the avowed one- implies changing the way of life of the “masses”. The change is intended for those to be saved without these evincing a desire for their worldly salvation. The plan responds to the higher truth held by the tribe that holds esoteric degrees. Diplomas earned for walking on the clouds but not on the common man’s ground, elevate these redeemers above the crowd mired in its shortsighted materialism.

After his escape from the Soviet orbit, the writer began to study Political Science in Oregon. Past decades have left the experience vivid. Living freedom, instead of being a “class alien” with no right to more than an eight-grade education, made a system that did not threaten my physical existence exhilarating. Therefore, the study of “government” seemed as exciting as the shoot-out in a western.

As a new arrival, I craved knowledge of my new home. I wanted to discover why the system works and how the success of individuals correlates with the framework “my” people have created. Luckily, I surmised by then that success and failure are not accidental but represent man-made factors.

Who we are

The Brussels Journal is written by Europeans, living in as well as outside Europe. The Brussels Journal is published by the Society for the Advancement of Freedom in Europe (SAFE), a Swiss non-profit organisation.